Saturday, June 25, 2016

June by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

June by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore is a the next delightful novel by the bestselling author of Bittersweet. Cassie has just lost her grandmother, the closest person to her and the person who raised her after the death of her parents in a car accident. Cassie is depressed that she hadn't even spent enough time with her grandmother, June, to even notice that she was dying of cancer. Cassie has inherited her grandmother's house and is astonished to find that it is falling down in disrepair. How could all of this happened and Cassie not even notice? Her depression is so bad that it is all Cassie can do to even get up out of bed after spending 16 or more hours there. If that were not enough there are the strange dreams of the past. It is as if the house has its own life and it is trying to tell her of its past and of Cassie's own history and that of June's life as a young girl. While Cassie is wallowing in her own sadness, one day the doorbell awakens her midday and the caller, Nick, announces that Jack Montgomery, an old famous actor, has left her his entire fortune along with the announcement that she is his granddaughter. Of course Cassie knows that this must be a hoax, wouldn't she know it if she were a part of a famous man's family? Nick it turns out works for one of Jack's daughters, Tate, and she was expecting to inherit the money and is miffed that the money is to go to someone she has never even heard. Nick's job is to get Cassie to give him some DNA off of a cheek swab and he could be on his way. That is what he was supposed to do but Nick just loves the character of the old house and gets lost looking at the crown molding and such. Nick is not bad to look at and he is very interesting so though Cassie agrees that it is very unlikely that she is related she wants to have more information about Jack and her grandmother, June. Soon Nick and Tate along with her sister Elda, none of whom get along have moved into Cassie's house and Cassie finds herself interested in finding out the truth of the house and June and Jack's love story.

This story easily flows back and forth between the summer of 1955 and June and Jack's love story and the present day of cell phones and the renovation of the house. The reader finds herself drawn into how this story could have taken place and the secrets needed to keep the story in the past. Cassie has always thought she knew her grandmother and grandfather, Art Danvers, but there was the time she deeply hurt her grandmother after she had made the picture of her family car accident and displayed it. Cassie had thought she was merely portraying distant memory but her grandmother had strangely said something about keeping it quiet like it was a secret. At the time she had just thought it was the bottle on the floorboard of the car that caused June all the distress. Then Cassie had known that her grandfather's real name was Adlebert and though she thought it an odd name she didn't know until Nick told her that this was Jack Montgomery's real name. This mystery/love story is difficult to lay down once you start reading it so don't start it just before bed unless you want to be up all night.
I received this book from Blogging for books for this review.